An open letter to the minister of stealth, I mean health

On the eve of World Aids Day I write to you about the unfulfilled promises for which we can’t possibly only blame you …

Dear Bra Aaron,

One of the most appealing things about your appointment as minister is your general approachability — hence I know that this letter to you from citizen nobody will surely be well received. Allow me to call you Bra Aaron.

Quite apart from being a simple citizen who often says things clearer than most politicians, you are a medical doctor yourself who understands the slog and pain of medical school, making you naturally empathetic to doctors some of whom have had to make do with salaries equal to those of domestic workers of the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg. The difference is that the poor doctors had to spend close to a decade in school to be able to ply their trade.

Your initial confession that you are alive to their embarrassing reality was soon overtaken by your inaction and spoilt by your attempt to use public relations and spin to inform doctors of the real percentage of their increases. So under your new broom that is supposedly sweeping clean, doctors are still worse off — the tune has changed but the words of their fiscal realities has not changed one bit. We are sitting on a time bomb of demoralised professionals whose job it is to save lives. So Bra Aaron, your riot act to some of them last week while making nice headlines of you as “Dr No Nonsense”, rings hollow when your department has gone to Parliament and asked for a budget that would see money for health running out before the end of the year.

You are lucky that no one, not even the YCL, has yet called for your head over that shame.

Why am I reliving this sorry tale of high promises and under delivery? Well, maybe it’s because I suddenly remembered amid the noise of your alliance partners’ call for a genocide indictment against the head of the “previous administration” that during your tenure as education MEC in Limpopo you were among those that misled the same president of the republic then, into promising the whole country that your province will eradicate schools under trees in no time. In your own budget speech back in 2007 you said with bold alacrity “since the president has directed that there should be no kids under trees we have supplied seven hundred classrooms”. But alas, to this day, Limpopo is one of the worst provinces to boast trees as schools and the highest rate of learners who are being impregnated by school teachers meant to nurture and protect them. Once again, high promises and no delivery at all.

But it wouldn’t be fair, now would it, Bra Aaron — to blame only you for the immorality of teachers who pretended to be teaching under you, while they impregnate and infect innocent children with STI’s. Nor would it be fair to put on your ministerial doorstep the fact that while you were busy purchasing two expensive luxury vehicles some relation of yours has a child studying under a Morula tree in your home province. It can hardly be fair at all to blame you only , given the often stated policy of collective leadership that the ANC parrots each time any of their leaders is asked to take an iota of responsibility.

With this scintillating background, it boggles my mind quite frankly why you have said nothing to the simpletons call by the Young Communist League to have Mbeki charged for genocide for HIV inaction that happened under the collective nose of the ANC. Were you not part of that collective Bra Aaron? Did you therefore not directly countenance whatever so called madness that you have now discovered were HIV policies of that ANC government? Why is it correct to blame only Mbeki for that so called HIV/Aids madness and not correct to blame only you for some of the learners who died after being infected with diseases by teachers who were under you political custody?

Interesting that you have been making excited claims that for the first time (your emphasis), South Africa is about to see an exemplary president who will — himself –- lead the fight against HIV/Aids. Bugger the fact that this new messiah of Aids was at the helm of the South African National Aids Council and also at the helm of the moral regeneration campaign for many years — roles both of which did not get into the way of his now well known shower-to-avoid-aids saga. So Bra Aaron, you would have the country believe that nevertheless, a new script will be written on December 1 — maybe as a fulfillment of Zuma’s apology for confessing what he really understands about what can or cannot stop HIV infections? According to you and the YCL, this miseducation of our nation does not count in the genocide stakes of someone who happily deputised Mbeki for years.

So we stand on edge with baited breath for the new policy that would improve the “biggest ARV roll-out in the southern hemisphere”, the policy which the ANC used to campaign for office. I ask quite frankly, if 300 000 people died because the likes of you were consenting adults in the leadership of the ANC, are you going to join Mbeki on the stand as part of your collective leadership? Or are you going to silently endorse the sentiment to blame Mbeki only for all the woes of HIV and Aids?

Do you really want us to believe that the entire collective leadership of the ANC was out argued by one guy for over 15 years?

Mei Bra, while you are busy politicking with political amnesia about your hand in the so called genocide — it seems to me that a more serious genocide of under delivery is brewing under your medical nose. Some of the following is the cross that ordinary citizen nobody like me have to bear:

A hospital in Bisho in the Eastern Cape — next door to the provincial legislature — is without linen. Patients have to bring their own linen in order to be admitted. This is the story of many rural hospitals including in Limpopo from whence you come.

Several ambulances in several hospitals are sitting on bricks — no maintenance. The less said about the appalling ratio of ambulance to citizen in provinces like Limpopo the better.

Hospitals in the Free State have run out of medication at least three times in the last year. A quick inquiry into other provinces may reveal worse.
A historic hospital in the Eastern Cape has been shut down despite government promises to the contrary — expensive equipment is being looted in the process and who knows it may well be sold in pawn shops across our borders!
An elevator to the theatre in one of Jo’burg’s busiest hospitals has been dysfunctional for months. This is the tip of the iceberg about doctors’ working conditions that militate against their very oath to save lives.

And these are just samples of a septic wound that is our health system … now I wonder quite frankly, who should be charged with genocide?

Mokone, I am tempted to say that the real reason for turning a blind eye to this tragic call to humiliate Mbeki over again, is because under his regime your political star hardly saw the sky … but that would be too much speculation … so I will not say it.

Yours fellow citizen nobody,
Onkgopotse JJ Tabane

Tabane is the political advisor to Cope parliamentary leader. He writes in his personal capacity.